Speaking of wealth

The Diamond Bar X is a postcard-perfect slice of Montana solitude. A former cattle ranch that’s been parceled up into sprawling home sites, it sits not far outside Augusta, a cowboy town beneath Montana’s Rocky Mountain Front, where the Great Plains crash into majestic snow-peaked mountains to dramatic effect.

[...]

By all accounts, this was a little community positioned just right for fishing, hunting, hiking in some of Montana’s wilder mountain spaces.

And that’s how it functioned for decades, residents said in court, until Joseph Campbell bought 300 acres at the Diamond Bar X, moved in and started putting up locked gates that blocked access to well-trodden thoroughfares that people in the area had used for years.

Within five years, court records say, the police were called 25 times to deal with Campbell’s threats and erratic behavior, and his seeming obsession over keeping people off every inch of his property despite longstanding agreements among the neighbors for access to the neighboring publicly owned land.

[...]

He shot and killed his neighbor, Timothy Newman, a man who had repeatedly challenged Campbell over his access-blocking proclivities. Campbell first claimed it was self-defense because Newman threatened him, but last year he finally pleaded guilty to negligent homicide. He’s now on probation, under a 20 years suspended prison sentence.

  Guardian

Murder. No jail time. Don't try this at home.

It’s become the new class war of the west, one public lands advocate I interviewed told me.

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According to a study from the Center for Western Priorities, 4m acres of public lands in the Rocky Mountain West (Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico) are considered “landlocked”, blocked off by private landowners who control adjacent properties or roadways. Two million of those landlocked acres are in Montana.

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[P]ublic access through private land is a hot-button issue in the west.

Stay home peasants. You've got a TV.

No, I don't think that's the land in question. It's just a stock photo from Getty Images embedded in the article. But isn't it fabulous?

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.